Gujarat High Court
Manharlal I. Shah vs Yogeshkumar Kanaiyalal Saraia And Ors. on 21 January, 1987
Equivalent citations: (1987)1GLR608
Author: G.T. Nanavati
Bench: G.T. Nanavati
JUDGMENT G.T. Nanavati, J.
1. This petition is filed by the original informant whose sister Anita died in suspicious circumstances on 14-9-1985. She was married to Yogeshkumar, respondent No. 1 about four months before the date of her death. She died at her husband's place and the information which was conveyed to the relatives of Anita and others was that she had committed suicide by hanging. No post mortem examination was allowed to be performed. The petitioner's case is that no proper action was taken by the local police; and, therefore, he moved the higher police authorities and thereafter an offence came to be registered at Nadiad Town Police Station against respondents No. 1 to 5 for the offences punishable under Sections 306, 498-A, 201, 176 and 114 of the Indian Penal Code. Respondent No. 2 is the brother of respondent No. 1; and respondent No. 3 is his sister. Respondent No. 4 is the mother of respondent No. 1. Respondent No. 5 is his maternal uncle.
2. After completing the investigation, the police charge-sheeted those accused in the Court of the Judicial Magistrate; First Class, Nadiad. The learned Magistrate committed the case to the Court of Sessions. Shri Jhala, the learned Public Prosecutor is in charge of the prosecution. The petitioner has also engaged a lawyer to represent him and assist the learned Public Prosecutor in conducting the case.
3. As the lawyer of the petitioner noticed that even though witnesses Vinodkumar, Natwarlal, Pushpaben and Kanaiyalal have referred to a note written by deceased Anita in their police statements, the said note was not shown to these witnesses while they were examined in the Court; and it has not been produced before the Court. He also noticed that the said note is an important piece of evidence as it discloses how life of Anita had become miserable as a result of ill- treatment given by respondent No. 1 and his relatives. It is the case of the petitioner that his lawyer drew attention of the learned Public Prosecutor to this lapse and requested him to do needful in the matter, but the learned Public Prosecutor did not pay any heed and was not inclined to do anything in that behalf. Under these circumstances, the petitioner gave application Exh. 25 on 25-6-1986 requesting the Court to direct the investigating officer to produce the said note before the Court so that it can be shown to the witnesses and brought on the record of the case. The learned Public Prosecutor objected to it; and, therefore, the petitioner's lawyer gave another application Exh. 26 on that very day for permission to address the Court in support of the application Exh. 25. The learned Sessions Judge rejected that application; and, therefore, the petitioner has filed this petition challenging the said order passed below Exh. 26.
4. It was contended by the Learned Counsel for the petitioner that the learned Sessions Judge has not correctly interpreted Section 301 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (hereafter referred to as "the Code"), and has erroneously rejected application Exh. 26. It was urged that the said section should be so interpreted as to confer a right on the complainant to represent his case before the Court. In support of his contention, he first drew our attention to the definition of the term "Public Prosecutor" as contained in Section 2(u) of the Code. According to that definition, "Public Prosecutor" means any person appointed under Section 24 and includes any person acting under the directions of a Public Prosecutor. It was urged that whereas for an appointment of a Public Prosecutor certain qualifications are laid down, no such qualifications are prescribed with respect to the person who can act under the directions of a Public Prosecutor. Thus, any person who acts under the directions of a Public Prosecutor will have to be regarded as a Public Prosecutor and can be incharge of that trial before the Sessions Court. If such a person can conduct a trial before the Sessions Court, there is no reason why a lawyer engaged by a complainant to assist the Public Prosecutor should not be permitted to conduct that trial or to address the Court when that becomes necessary. It was urged that keeping this legal position in mind Sub-section (2) of Section 301 of the Code should be interpreted. The right created by Sub-section (2) must be interpreted liberally and with this legal position as the background. It was then urged that if after recording of evidence is over, a pleader is permitted to submit his written arguments as per Section 301(2), there is no reason why he should not be permitted to address the Court at an earlier stage on points or issues arising during the course of the trial. Our attention was also invited to Sub-section (3) of Section 302 which provides that any person conducting a prosecution may do so personally or by a pleader. It was further urged that it would be desirable to concede such a right to the complainant because in a given case it may happen that the Public Prosecutor may not take active interest in the case or may not conduct the trial in a fair manner and that may result into miscarriage of justice. Permitting private person's pleader to address the Court in such circumstances would be in the interest of justice.
5. In support of these submissions, reliance was placed upon the decision of the Kerala High Court in Chillikkoodathi Manuel Augustin v. State of Kerala 1984 Criminal Law Journal page 1897. Therein it has been observed as under:
If on the other hand the prosecution, fails in its primary duty to adduce any evidence, and persons prepared to give evidence in support of the prosecution are available, it is the duty of the prosecution to allow them to assist the Court in support of the prosecution. Section 254 has to be understood in the light of Section 311. Both the sections have to be read together. The power of the Court cannot be curtailed. The right of the parties cannot be ignored and the cause of justice cannot be defeated. In other words, the right to adduce evidence in support of the prosecution envisaged in Section 254 of the Code is not a right which can be arbitrarily defeated by the prosecution; but a right reasonably protected by the Court under Section 311 of the Code.
6. The Kerala High Court in that case was concerned with interpretation of Sections 254 and 311 of the Code. Though we are not concerned with those sections in this case, it was urged that the same reasoning should be adopted while interpreting Sections 225 and 301 of the Code. In our opinion, neither the ratio nor the reasoning in that case can be brought to help while interpreting Sections 225 and 301 of the Code. What the Kerala High Court was concerned in that case was to resolve an apparent conflict between those two sections of the Code. The Court applied the principle of harmonious constuction and interpreted the two sections accordingly, in our case, there is no conflict either apparent or real between Section 225 on the one hand and Section 301 on the other hand. It was rightly argued by the learned Public Prosecutor that if Section 301(2) is interpreted as submitted on behalf of the petitioner, it would create a conflict between Sections 225 and 301(2).
7. Obviously Section 301(2) will have to be interpreted bearing in mind the basic principles of criminal jurisprudence. The Supreme Court in Thakur Ram v. State of Bihar has stated the principle in these terms:
The criminal law is not to be used as an instrument of wrecking private vengeance by an aggrieved party against the person who, according to that party, had caused injury to it. Barring a few exceptions, in criminal matters the party who is treated as the aggrueve party is the State which is the custodian of the social interests of the community at large and so it is for the State to take all the steps necessary for bringing the person who has acted against the social interests of the community to book.
8. This Court in Special Criminal Application No. 1092 of 1983, dealing with the question of constitutional validity of Section 301 of the Code on the ground that it violates Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution inasmuch as it does not enable a private person to instruct a pleader of his choice to conduct the prosecution, observed as under:
We feel that what has been missed essentially in this case is the purpose of a criminal prosecution and the object sought to be secured by prosecuting an offender. A prosecution of an offender is not conceived as a redress to the aggrieved individual. So far as he is concerned, it is open to him to resort to such remedies as are available under the Civil law of the land. The prosecution process is intended to book an offender and to seek his punishment in case he is found guilty. That is essentially a function of the State since any offence is conceived as committed against the society and it is the State which has the responsibility of prosecution, however much an individual citizen may be aggrieved by the act which resulted in the crime. Therefore, unlike an aggrieved individual seeking redress in any civil proceeding, in a criminal prosecution, the responsibility is entirely that of the State.
9. To be consistent with these principles a provision is made in Section 225 of the Code, that in every trial before a Court of Sessions, the prosecution shall be conducted by a public prosecutor. Right of private person to prosecute an offender by a lawyer of his own choice is thus made subordinate to the right of the State; and it is for this reason that when the State takes up the case and the Public Prosecutor appears on its behalf, the private person or the lawyer instructed to appear for him has no right of audience unless permitted by the Public Prosecutor.
10. The Learned Counsel for the petitioner has also relied upon the observations made by the Supreme Court in A.R. Anlulay v. R.S. Nayak that "It is a well recognised principle of criminal jurisprudence that anyone can set or put the criminal law into motion except where the statute enacting or creating an offence indicates to the contrary. Locus standi of the complainant is a concept foreign to criminal jurisprudence save and except that where the statute creating an offence provides for the eligibility of the complainant, by necessary implication the general principle gets excluded by such statutory provision. Punishment of the offender in the interest of the society being one of the objects behind penal statutes enacted for larger good of the society, right to initiate proceedings cannot be whittled down, circumscribed or fettered by putting it into a strait-jacket formula, of locus standi unknown to criminal jurisprudence, save and except specific statutory exception." Even this decision cannot help the petitioner. While recognising the general principle of criminal jurisprudence that anyone can set the criminal law into motion, the Supreme Court made it very clear that it can have no application to a case where there is a specific statutory provision to the contrary. Moreover, that is not the question which has arisen in this case. The right to set the criminal law into motion is not in dispute. What is claimed by the petitioner is a right of audience before the Court in a case instituted upon a police report, basing his claim upon the fact that he has set the criminal law into motion. This being a prosecution by the State only the Public Prosecutor can be in charge thereof.
11. The Learned Counsel for the petitioner also relied upon the decision of the Supreme Court in Surtil Kumar v. Phota Sheikh and submitted that if the trial is not conducted fairly by the Public Prosecutor it gets vitiated. In view of the facts and circumstances of that case, the Supreme Court held that the trial in that case was not fair and just so far as the prosecution was concerned that it was heavily loaded in favour of the accused and therefore, it was vitiated. For those reasons, the acquittal of the accused was set aside. It is difficult to appreciate how this decision can be of any help to the petitioner. The contention raised by the petitioner in this case is quite different. The contention is that he had a right to be heard-on application Exh. 25 given by him to the Court.
12. Thus, none of the decisions cited by the Learned Counsel for the petitioner supports the contention of the petitioner that a lawyer engaged by him to assist the public prosecutor has a right to be heard on the application Exh. 25. The reasons put forward by the Learned Counsel in support of his contention do not justify interpretation of Section 301(2) as suggested by him. If the said section is interpreted as contended by the Learned Counsel, that would not only run counter to the basic principles of criminal jurisprudence pointed out above, but would create an inconsistency in the two provisions of the Act. Such an interpretation would lead to uncertainty and complication, for example, when the Public Prosecutor and the lawyer engaged by a private party to assist him make submissions contrary to each other. Merely because any person acting under the directions of a Public Prosecutor is also to be regarded as a Public Prosecutor and therefore can conduct a trial before the Court of Sessions, that cannot be a valid ground for holding that a lawyer engaged by a private party has also a right of audience in a trial before the Sessions Court.
13. In Special Criminal Application No. 1092 of 1983 (by Guj. H.C. Poti, C.J & S.B. Majmudar, J.) decided on 15-12-1983, this Court has held as under:
Section 301 does not envisage any power in the Public Prosecutor either to consent to or to object to appearance by a private lawyer in a case which he is in charge. In fact that only lays down the eligibility of a Public Prosecutor and Assistant Public Prosecutor in charge of a case to appear and plead without any written authority. Sub-section (2) of that section limits the extent to which a pleader instructed by any private person can assist in conducting the prosecution. That does not enable any such pleader to appear in the case.
In Criminal Revision Application No. 225 of 1985, Varyabhai Jesangdas Patel v. State of Gujarat 1986 GLH 154 a learned single Judge of this Court has held as under:
That a very limited right seems to have been given to an advocate instructed by a private person and that is to assist the Public Prosecutor or Assistant Public Prosecutor. The language of the section, therefore, cannot be stretched to mean something which it prohibits by implication.
14. For the reasons stated above, we do not find any substance in any of the contentions raised on behalf of the petitioner. We hold that on true interpretation of Section 301(2), a lawyer instructed by a private person to assist the Public Prosecutor has no right of audience except to the extent permitted by that section. If he feels that trial is not conducted fairly it will be open to him to draw attention of the Court in that behalf. If the Court feels that some assistance is necessary on a point arising before it, it may appoint such lawyer or any other lawyer as amicus curiae. Subjected by a private person to assist the Public Prosecutor has no right of audience in a trial before the Sessions Court.
15. In the result, this petition fails and is dismissed. Rule is discharged with no order as to costs. Interim relief stands vacated.